One Evening In The Rainy Season And Sealed Off Analysis

A bustling modern city seems to be the most exciting place to be. Or so it seems. While the city itself seems colorful and vibrant, these modern industrial cities tend to be devoid of “humans.” Surely, humans do exist and they constitute the city population, but city-dwellers are often stuck in the mundane, boxed life of an urban city, deprived of their individuality. Shanghai, a city where “One Evening in the Rainy Season” and “Sealed Off” are set, is no exception. To Shanghai residents, everyday life in Shanghai is mere boredom. Working and living in their little cubicles, all dressed alike, lost in the routine, without much purpose. Still, because the physical space is often monotonous, a change in the environment sparks a chance to escape from routine, and quickly fall into the depths of imagination and fantasy, breaking the …show more content…
In the case of Shanghai in “One Evening in the Rainy Season” and “Sealed Off,” city dwellers partake in changes and seek to individualize themselves, away from uniformity, but only knowing that their individualization is neither timeless nor permanent. During the brief intimate role-plays, individuals can take on any role that they wish to assume because those roles are short-lived and presents no risks to their daily lives. The roles individuals acquire, interestingly enough, resemble past gender norms of Chinese society, before the establishment of an urban environment where gender roles are no longer traditional. In both stories, as the public urban environment turns private and personal, male protagonists become bolder, more confident and seize distinct identities for themselves, while female characters lose their defining identities and project reserved, coy characteristics, whether self-imposed or not. These roles, of course, quickly fade once the physical environmental changes expire and Shanghai returns to its regular